Environmental Perspective

I dreamed earlier this week that I was in Stuttgart, Germany surrounded by the Black Forest. I had to make several treks to Frankfort and back, not a short distance, especially on foot. I made the trip several times relaying information to Mr. Goodmark from HQ. It was odd that I wasn't distracted by the need to walk this distance because, well - everyone walks in Germany. Its a part of their culture, so I did too. Besides, distances are indicated in kilometers, not miles, which despite being more of them, they pass more quickly too, so it wasn't at all off-putting.


The next day I dreamed I had gone back in time to 1950s America. Pastel cars, pastel appliances, pastel clothes! I was shopping for a rough sewn off-the-rack button-down summer shirt - like a cool silk Hawaiian without the flower pattern. I found a beige shirt that had the word "Dodge" embroidered on it, only in today's modern font. I found another in the same color only with the Japanese flag embroidered in burt orange on both the front and back like a target - but it was the official national flag, not the one I was expecting, the naval variant. I finally settled on a beige one with a twist design on both sides adjacent dark brow and burnt orange panels. It would great with my old man hat.


As I've stated many times before (most recently in my Excitingly Existentialistic post), "While I was a young man attending an environmental science academy I was taught many liberal things - things I believed to be true because my instructors were articulate, world-weary adventurous adults. By the time I left home, moved overseas and started experiencing the world firsthand, I found that what I saw and what I was taught were two very different things. It was a very confusing couple of years for me as I worked to reconcile, and unlearn certain truths which had been ingrained in me."


I remember the first time I told suzanne1945 this story. She told me knew exactly how I felt because it had also happened to her. I was confused, because she seemed to have more liberal tendencies. That's when she explained that her experience had been identically opposite. She'd grown up in and had been raised in a primarily conservative environment, then experienced the opposite when out on her own.


This fascinated me for months! I later realized that I was released into 1980s Reaganomics; yuppies and education and financial success - she had been released into 1960s California; hippies and freedom and experimentation. To further cement my understanding of what had transpired, I was taught by those very hippies as she was taught by the post-war conservatives.


Perspective - its everywhere! And given the cyclic nature of my discovery, it proves to me that anyone who clings too tightly to one political camp over the other has surely lost that perspective. They are simply a product of an environment they do not yet understand.